Villagers vote to ban ‘La Colosa’ gold mining project in Colombia

Residents of Cajamarca in central Colombia made a nearly unanimous decision in a popular vote on March 26 to block a massive gold mine, dubbed La Colosa, one of the largest in the world.
by Bram Ebus on 27 March 2017 |

The vote was almost 98 percent against the establishment of La Colosa under the auspices of the world’s third-largest gold producer, AngloGold Ashanti.

The popular vote functions as a protective measure if collective rights are considered endangered, including long-term impacts caused by mining and energy projects.

The popular vote could now give way to a legal battle between AngloGold Ashanti and Colombia, as the company already stated its intention to try to continue the project while it studies the consequences of the vote.

CAJAMARCA, Colombia – Residents of a town in central Colombia sent a clear message on Sunday to the powers that be that they don’t want a large-scale mining operation in their backyard. In an almost unanimous vote of 6,165 of 6,296 voters (about 98 percent), inhabitants of the Colombian municipality of Cajamarca voted against one of the world’s largest planned gold mines. Dubbed La Colosa, the open-pit mine is a project of world’s third largest gold producer, AngloGold Ashanti.

“I voted no for the future generations. I have two nephews of seven and three years old. Even though they do not live in Cajamarca, I know that I want them to enjoy the little I’ve been able to enjoy so far, as it concerns the countryside,” said Camila Méndez, a 21-year old social sciences student living in Cajamarca, just a few hours before the announcement of the vote’s results. Méndez is a member of the local youth organisation Cosajuca. “If we win…we’d show the complete world that Cajamarca is able to defeat a huge multinational enterprise, a mining monster as AngloGold Ashanti.”

Residents celebrate in town square after the results of the vote were announced in Cajamarca, Colombia on March 26, 2017. Photo by Bram Ebus for Mongabay.

The popular vote functions as a protective measure if collective rights are considered endangered, including long-term impacts caused by mining and energy projects. However, the result of the popular vote does not necessarily mean the La Colosa project is doomed. A legal battle between the multinational and the Colombian government is still pending and AngloGold Ashanti has already publicly communicated that the company will try to continue with the project while it studies the consequences of the vote.

That didn’t stop residents from celebrating, though. As soon as the results were announced, hundreds of people started to celebrate in the center of the village. Many consider the vote to be a huge victory for the region and the country, and the culmination of years of work by civil society, area residents, and environmental activists.

It is also a landmark for local sovereignty, and a slap in the face of a mining project that is now officially labeled as unwanted by Cajamarca residents. It is expected to have reverberations in other communities that also seek to oppose other mega infrastructure projects.

Many area residents — like married couple and vegetable farmers José Joaquín and Luz Dary — would likely be personally impacted if La Colosa moves forward. On a recent rainy day, Joaquín found himself in the rain collecting the last strains of cilantro. He hurried off to the hamlet Anaime in order to transport the little harvest to the market of Cajamarca before nightfall. The Cajamarca region, a farming zone par excellence, is seen as a major agricultural hub for the country. Among the large cities it feeds is Colombia´s capital, Bogotá.

Joaquín’s wife fears how mining could impact their fields. “They will touch everything,” she said. “According to the company mining has nothing to do with agriculture, but that is something illogical.”

Area resident Luz Dary works in a vegetable field in Cajamarca. All of the green surrounding her grows over an AngloGold Ashanti mining title. Photo by Bram Ebus for Mongabay.

A mining title overlaps the humble two hectares she works on, full of cilantro, beans and peas.

She fears for all that they grow. “With mining we won´t have crops,” Dary said. “I cannot offer contaminated products to my buyers. This would be irresponsible of me.”

Colossal risks

AngloGold Ashanti is a South African mining multinational that aims to develop its flagship mining project in Colombia, La Colosa. The company plans to exploit 33 million ounces of gold, located in the country’s central Tolima province, if they can obtain the necessary environmental licenses. The project is still in the exploration phase, but has already generated a nationwide debate about its future impact.

When Colombia implemented the 2001 Mining Code, it opened its doors to the world of mega-mining. The ample gamut of international companies that showed an interest in the even wider panorama of natural resources that Colombia has in the ground led to Colombia being only second on the list of countries with socio-environmental conflicts, calculated by the Environmental Justice Atlas.

AngloGold Ashanti was the absolute winner in last decade´s gold bonanza as the company and its subsidiaries got its hands on a lion’s share of mining titles – in 20 of Colombia´s 32 departments. When the world’s gold price was still rising exponentially in 2007, the La Colosa prospected deposit was called the “largest found in the last ten years” by the company’s president at the time.

The gold concentration of the La Colosa deposit is estimated at 0.82 grams per ton of rocks, which indicates a large amount of waste to be produced per gram of extracted metal. Depleting the estimated gold reserves would require the blasting of 1257.27 million tons of rock.

The mountain slopes of Cajamarca, Colombia are extremely fertile, and are home to plantain trees and coffee bushes like those pictured here. Photo by Bram Ebus for Mongabay.

Many Colombians have grown distrustful of projects AngloGold Ashanti has developed elsewhere in the world, and thousands have protested their presence in Colombia. The corporation had the dubious distinction of being branded with the Public Eye Award in 2011 for allegedly contaminating land and poisoning people in Ghana. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the company was accused of financing paramilitary groups, and in South Africa a court made a landmark ruling to allow for a class action lawsuit for miners to seek reparations for medical expenses, damages and loss of wages due to unhealthy labor conditions.

AngloGold Ashanti could not be reached for additional comment about the vote in Colombia and their La Colosa project beyond their public statement.

Roadblocks

Aside from Sunday’s La Colosa vote, AngloGold Ashanti has faced other controversy in Colombia. Various local organizations opposed to the mining project say they received threats from paramilitary groups such as the Black Eagles. Parts of the proposed mine overlap with protected forest reserves, which according to Julio Fierro, a leading Colombian geologist, were created to “protect soil, water and wildlife.”

Then there are the fault lines. Under the mining development zone is a dangerous geological fault line known as the Palestina fault. It crosses under the location where AngloGold Ashanti plans to build its tailings dam. Fierro says he can’t understand why such a risk would be undertaken.

“A zone as important as Cajamarca, a company that wants to build a tailings dam at a height of 3,000 meters (almost 10,000 feet) is an irresponsibility you cannot wrap your head around,” Fierro said.

There have been failures in respect to fault lines and mines elsewhere in South America. In November 2015 when the tailings dam of the Brazilian mining company Samarco collapsed, 19 people were killed whilst a river became polluted and many people were displaced from their livelihoods. A tailings dam contains a toxic sludge that, when it breaks, irreparably impacts the environment. Just 15 kilometers (over nine miles) from the proposed dam in Colombia is another active fault line, the Ibagué.

Fierro worries that it could all add up to a recipe for disaster.

“The case of AngloGold Ashanti’s planned tailings dam, an accumulation of rocks of more than 250 meters high (820 feet), constituting on the body of the dam in a seismic active region is madness,” Fierro said. “It will be one of the five biggest mining dumpsters in the world.”

Renzo Alexander García, a biologist at the University of Tolima in Colombia, says this is illegal.

“[The project will] disappear mountains, contaminate soils, water, air and put at risk collective rights for a clean environment for present and future generations, affect the food production of this region and to completely terminate the dynamics of the ecosystem,” Renzo García said in an interview. He stresses that the basin of the Coello River below the project site is of utmost importance as it “supplies water to about 800,000 people in the Tolima department.”

A difficult road to the popular vote

Organizing a popular vote on one of the country´s most emblematic cases has not been an easy ride for those involved. The vote was suspended once before when the State Council ruled that question posed was capricious and suggestive.

In July 2013, the first ever popular vote on a large-scale mining project in Colombia was held in Piedras, also in the Tolima department. With a turnout much higher than in presidential elections, 99 percent of the municipality voted “no” on a processing plant AngloGold Ashanti wanted to build.

At the time, the company responded to the results by saying they would continue to work on the project with the community, according to media reports. In the end, plans for the processing plant did change location, to Cajamarca.

Mounted police in Cajamarca, Colombia on March 26, 2017 before the referendum vote there. Photo by Bram Ebus for Mongabay.

The March 2017 vote faced other challenges. Earlier in March, the new mayor by the name of Pedro Pablo Marín Cruz was elected in Cajamarca. It was Cruz who decided to reduce the planned 35 ballot boxes spread throughout the municipality to 18. Cajamarca includes many distant hamlets throughout a mountainous area.

Collective outbreaks of happiness after the 2013 and 2017 referendums in the Tolima department showed that strong civil disagreement still exists over planned projects of AngloGold Ashanti.

“Dignity has no price, a farming culture won’t be sold because of pressures by the government and foreign companies,” activist Camila Méndez said.

Banner image: Residents celebrate in town square after the results of the vote were announced in Cajamarca, Colombia on March 26, 2017. Photo by Bram Ebus for Mongabay.

Bram Ebus is a freelance journalist based in Colombia. You can find him on Twitter at @BramEbus.

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